Distress Answered

Distress Answered

I call on the LORD in my distress, and he answers me.

Psalm 120:1

IN WORD Worship is all about approaching God. So are Psalms 120 through 134, the psalms of ascent. Perhaps they were written by captives who had returned to Jerusalem and to a destroyed Temple they had long grieved and now rebuilt. Or perhaps they were simply written and sung by pilgrims on their way to the Holy City. Regardless, they begin with the cry of every human being who ever wanted to know God and draw closer to Him: “I call on the Lord in my distress.”

That’s where worship begins, isn’t it? We didn’t start with a song in our heart or confidence in His presence. We didn’t even start out consciously knowing He existed. He was taught to us, and He probably became real at some point when we felt—even knew—we needed Him. Faith, for most of us, was born in a crisis.

That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with coming to God through a crisis. He has ordained many a catastrophe for just such an outcome. He lets His people be traumatized because trauma is often the only thing that will incline our hearts toward Him. But it doesn’t end there. The verse doesn’t conclude with distress; it concludes with an answer. God doesn’t let us go through our crisis so our hearts will be turned toward Him, only later to wonder whether or not He was really there. The plan is for Him to show Himself. Crisis leads to faith, and faith leads to revelation. That’s where worship can begin.

IN DEED You’ve undoubtedly gone through crises in your past, and you’ll go through them again. This is a wonderful verse to remember in such cases. But you may even be going through a crisis today. If so, this is a wonderful verse not just to remind you of God, but to hang on to with all your heart. You are given explicit permission through this explicit example to trust that when your world wars against you, you can call on God and He will answer. That’s a rock-solid guarantee from the Author of the inspired Word. At some point in your life, you need to know it. You may even need it today.

The great tragedy of life is not unanswered prayer but unoffered prayer.

—F. B. MEYER